Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we often hate new stuff

Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by dredmorbius on Monday July 25, 2016 @06:20PM (#12162044)

BG's reproductive success is a bit of an outlier by historical and even contemporary standards across cultures.

Ibn Saud, founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabian, had 45 sons alone. Such large families continue in the House of Saud.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud

There's the oft-cited case of Ghengis Khan, who by DNA estimates may have as many as 16 million surviving progeny. Estimates of the numbers of his actual children are quite hard to come by, and range from low (he had only one official wife) to many thousands.

Gates, in particular, is aware of several modern challenges, including overpopulation. His "reproductive success" may well be a calculated strategy for long-term advantage. Or simply altrusitic motive.

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Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by Spooky23 on Monday July 25, 2016 @06:48PM (#12162163)

Birth control and the modern tendency to frown upon mass rape/women as property are probably primary factors to the Ghengis Khan vs Gates example.

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Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by dredmorbius on Monday July 25, 2016 @10:02PM (#12162923)

There was a reason I provided both ancient and current examples of high-reproductivity in dominant males.

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Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by cma on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @09:12PM (#12177719)

Dowry systems in Saudi Arabia are pretty far along the rapey end of the spectrum as far as consensual sexual relations go.

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Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by jpatokal on Monday July 25, 2016 @07:12PM (#12162270)

Genghis Khan died in 1227, meaning ~40 generations since then. If a random person sired two sons in 1227, and each of them had two offspring in each generation who in turn had children, that's 2^40 = 1e12 progeny today.

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Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by btilly on Monday July 25, 2016 @08:09PM (#12162472)

They mean surviving progeny with his DNA. After 7 generations, most of your descendants are not actually genetically related to you.

By contrast current estimates are that about 0.5% of the world has a y-chromosome descended from a relatively close ancestor of Genghis Khan. (When his horde burst out, both he and his male relatives took advantage of "mating opportunities".)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan#DNA_... for more.

A side note. His y-chromosome would have benefited more than his other chromosomes since many of his sons, grandsons and other direct male descendants also had good breeding opportunities. Those men had his y-chromosome, but not all of his other chromosomes.

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Re:Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we ofte... by thaumasiotes on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @06:48AM (#12164666)

Your very own numbers should immediately tell you that they're useless, since there aren't 1e12 people today. What's the point of comparing Genghis Khan's empirical reproductive record to a hypothetical, known-to-be-impossible, known-to-be-not-even-slightly-related-to-what-could-have-theoretically-happened reproductive record?

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